Abstract

Social media is growing rapidly because it supports some important social needs. Government will need to understand how social media support these social needs if government is to use social media well. Social media supports the increased reliance on human networks, the need for rapid interactive communications, the need to blur what is private and public, and the need for engaging multimedia. Whether government can use social media will depend upon how well government can see, understand, and attend to these needs. Can government move from hierarchical, controlled communications to where it is just an (important) node within a network? Social media is about fast, interactive communications. How will bureaucracies adapt to the increased pressures for timely responses? Social media, therefore, presents novel and challenging strategic, policy, and managerial issues for many US governments. This paper reports on an environmental scan of the important issues facing US governments and the creative ways in which they are adapting to the challenges. This is supplemented by an in‑depth participant‑observation study of the use of social media by several departments within the City of Columbus, State of Ohio, USA. Proponents of social media, like those of the early days of the Internet, are wildly enthusiastic about how much social media can do to improve government. Claims are made that this technology is paradigm‑shifting, like the printing press, which put knowledge into the hands of the ordinary person. Given the many policy and managerial issues yet to be resolved, it is clear that there is no technology imperative that will necessarily drive government to become more democratic. Early web government pages could have been made more interactive, yet they primarily took on the task of broadcasting a one way instead of a two way flow of information. There is no reason to believe that Twitter would not follow the same path. It could easily become an application whose only benefit is in more quickly broadcasting information to a mobile phone. A better way to think about social media is that it merely provides a small window of opportunity, which for a short period of time, allows government to comprehensively reexamine how it does things, and thereby, provides the opportunity to change policies and procedures in a way that improves government. Governments typically ask how can we adapt social media to the way in which we do business? A very different question is how can social media provide us a way to do things in way that we have not done before? The question that is asked will determine whether a revolution will actually place.

Abstract

Web 2.0 tools and applications (e.g., blogs, wikis, forums, RSS, podcasts and videocasts) as well as social markers (e.g., Del.icio.us, Technorati, Facebook and Digg) have reached government and commerce sites; however, there is still a dearth of res
earch related to the adoption levels of such tools. The purpose of this research is to contribute toward filling this gap by assessing the impact of this trend on Mexican local government sites by asking the following question: to what extent have local e
‑government websites in Mexico adopted Web 2.0 tools and applications? To answer this question, the paper starts by reviewing key concepts of Web 2.0 applications in government portals. On the basis of a longitudinal evaluation of Mexican local government
sites, we found that most of the websites analyzed have increased their use of Web 2.0 tools and applications; however, we also found that not all applications are equally well‑developed or used on the local websites. Web 2.0 is only in the initial stage
s of adoption in Mexican government websites.

Abstract

Abstract: Social media have proven to be convenient tools that can be used by government authorities to increase openness and transparency, gain a greater understanding of public opinions, promote the concept of eParticipation and give citizens a voice,
as well as to reach many users at low cost. In addition, these social media have the unique feature of being able to update content frequently in real‑time, in particular during emergencies, disasters, or special events. The purpose of this paper is to e
xplore the adoption of Twitter by the government authorities in Saudi Arabia. It is a network analysis study seeking quantitative data. Ninety‑three Saudi government authorities Twitter accounts were examined using web‑based analytical tools. The general
findings of the study indicate that the level of maturity of using Twitter by Saudi public authorities in general has not matured yet. Also, it is indicated that there is a significant difference between the performances of these accounts as only a few o
f them produced 53% of the total tweets. Natural and interactive accounts are more likely to have more followers. In addition, there is a misunderstanding of the role of using this new medium, as some authorities have more than one account and the collabo
ration between these accounts is limited in terms of being connected to each other.

Abstract

Despite great advances in ICT, social media, participatory platforms and mobile apps, we seem to still be locked in the one‑way communication “paradigm” where information flows unilaterally from government to citizens and seldom vice‑versa. As a result, citizens are more receivers rather than conscious producers of information, data, ideas, solutions and decisions in the context of public policies. By means of an extensive literature review, this paper aims to explore the challenges on the part of government that prevent the transition to more dialogic governance and identifies the requirements for a meaningful application of social media for this purpose. The paper contributes to the literature in three ways: i) redefining a typology of social media‑based citizens‑government relationship; ii) clarifying the difference between challenges and risks of social media application by governments and identifying a typology of government challenges; and iii) identifying government requirements as a conditio sine‑qua non for overcoming these challenges upfront, enabling more effective two‑way interactions between governments and citizens. The paper concludes with discussion of implications and directions for further research.

Abstract

Abstract: With the emergence of Web 2.0 technology, governments are able to deliver quality services and fully satisfy the needs of their citizens. Despite the importance of this emerging trend, identifying and attracting an audience for government‑affili
ated social media (SM) services has proved to be a significant challenge. The figures for public participation in government2.0 remain below expectations. This paper is one of the few attempts to identify those factors affecting citizens decisions to u
se SM platforms as a means for communication with their government. To develop a new model of SM adoption, this research study is based on a literature review, and will extend the Unified Theory of Acceptance and Use of Technology (UTAUT) model by integ
rating cultural factors identified by the Hofstede model (masculinity, uncertainty avoidance, power distance and collectivism) and factors related to the trust and motivational model. This paper has created a comprehensive taxonomy of those factors that
influence the adoption of SM among citizens, while providing a list of hypotheses for evaluating the significance of these factors.